Mt. Healthy hires tax collector

Outside agencies will handle taxes and bills for waste collections

City council approved a resolution that changes how the city's income tax will be collected.

Council approved moving its tax collection to the Regional Income Tax Agency, known as RITA.

The city's tax rate is 1.5 percent on gross wages, salaries, commissions and net profits. This includes self-employed individuals and rental property owners as well as residents. Taxpayers who pay the city where they are employed are allowed a credit up to 1.25 percent if wages are subject to another city's tax.

City Manager Bill Kocher said Mount Healthy collects about $1.3 million in income revenue each year. The city has a $4.5 million budget so income tax is about 25 percent of its revenue.

With unexpected retirement of the city's tax commissioner Susan Law at the end of June, Kocher said how the city's finances are handled became a priority.

The city has been transitioning some of its services since the passage of the charter last November. The charter doesn't provide for an elected tax commissioner, auditor, treasurer or law director.

"We were going to have to make some changes in the financial area any way," Kocher said. "Susan's retirement forced us to step back and look at everything and pushed finances to the top of the priority list."

Kocher said the city focused on two areas that require time and cause difficulty for the understaffed office: taxes and waste collection bills.

At the Aug. 20 meeting, council addressed both.

RITA offers comprehensive tax collection services from registration through litigation. The nonprofit agency provides tax services for other area municipalities, such as Greenhills, Loveland and Silverton.

RITA can administer and enforce the income tax laws of each of the participating municipalities but each municipal corporation retains its right to administer and enforce its own income tax laws concurrently with the RITA board. And because it gets its tax data from the IRS, rather than relying on citizens to fully report, Kocher said the tax records wil be more precise.

"This will help us identify that everything is being collected that should be," he said.

Kocher said for most residents, the biggest change will be that they send their taxes to a different address. City personnel can handle some issues, but most will be referred to a RITA liaison for personal support and help. "Council was clear that they don't just want people to be told to call Columbus," he said. "We want to make sure our residents don't lose that personal support."

Using the service costs the city a percentage of what is collected. Kocher estimated RITA will cost the city between $40,000 and $50,000 annually. Using the service will free up the time of office personnel to do other work in the city.

The city hopes the RITA system will be up and running in January.

Council also approved a change in the way residents will pay for waste collection. The city has a contract with Rumpke, and has billed residents directly on a quarterly basis for the service. Council approved contracting with the City of Cincinnati to send the waste bills with the Greater Cincinnati Water Works bills on a quarterly basis.

"Again, this is not a big change," Kocher said. "Residents will get bills on a different day and they will be able to pay both at the same time."

Kocher said the city will send out information in the waste billings newsletter that will go out in September to residents explaining the changes and starting the education process for residents about the changes.

Councilman James Wolf said he had heard from some residents who weren't happy about the change, but they were not at the Aug. 20 meeting. He said most of the concern was that Mount Healthy was contracting with Cincinnati. "I think there was more trust in our own city hall than there was with the City of Cincinnati or with Hamilton County," he said.

Mount Healthy Law Director Stephen Wolf said the city can opt out of the agreement with 60 days notice. Kocher said he hopes to start change for the waste bills for the fourth-quarter billing.

Councilwoman Jeanne George said technically, this change only affectswhere the bill is coming from. "We still have control of the price," she said.

Both ordinances were approved unanimously by council with a 7-0 vote.

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Mt. Healthy hires tax collector

City council approved a resolution that changes how the city's income tax will be collected.